Remodel update: we has mirrors!

Remodel update: we has mirrors!  The mirrors for our bathroom are now mounted.  I can shave in our bathroom now :)

I went to some trouble to get these mirrors, as I wanted to avoid the “green tinge” problem of conventional float glass.  The best thing I could find is a product called Starphire, a glass with particularly good clarity.  Then I needed to find a vendor that could cut the glass to size, bevel the edges, and plate the back to make a mirror.  That turned out to be the hard part, but I finally found the vendor: Bear Glass of Brooklyn, New York.  They did a bang-up job for me, working with this know-nothing to come up with the right design, perfectly executing it, and then shipping it in a most impressive crate to Utah.  The young lady who took my address didn't even know that Utah was part of the U.S.; I'm pretty sure they had never shipped there before :)  Then Mel Olsen, of Baker Cabinets in Mendon (the same fellow who built our vanity) made us a fine pair f matching mirror frames. 

The mess in there is the stuff I'm using to mount all the various things in the bathroom.  As you can see in the photo, quite a bit of it is done!

Barn: let the second floor commence!

Barn: let the second floor commence!  A truck full of lumber showed up this afternoon, carrying all the components for building the second floor.  Earlier today the builder delivered the steel posts that will carry the load for the second floor.  Assembly starts this afternoon.

The video at right shows how they unload the lumber.  This is not what I expected :)  Amazingly all the lumber seemed to get down in one piece, though one joist did get dinged.

In the center photo below you can see all the kinds of wood products on the load.  At right bottom on that photo are the ends of the long “glulam” beams that the second floor joists will all be hung from.  These are essentially a number of 2 x 6s all glued together to form one enormous beam.  The glulam beams will be held up by the steel posts.  In that same photo, you can also see the ends of the joists (upper left) and the plywood tongue-and-groove flooring (below the joists).  Quite a pile of stuff!

Tomatoes...

Tomatoes...  One thing I always missed in California was tomatoes.  That is, tomatoes that actually tasted like tomatoes – more particularly, like the tomatoes grown in New Jersey when I was a kid.  You could not buy good tomatoes like that in California –  not for any amount of money, from any store.  They just didn't exist.  Once every few years my mom and dad would send me a box of New Jersey tomatoes, and for a few days we'd feast on them.  That was the only time I got decent tomatoes for the last 40 years or so.

Until today.

My friend and neighbor Tim D. bought a big box of local tomatoes today that he's going to use to make salsa (the cooked kind).  He gave me five nice-looking tomatoes out of that box, and I ate two of them for my lunch.  I just washed them off, cut them up, and ate them with a little mayonnaise.  They were every bit as good as the best tomatoes I remember when growing up – dead ripe, with the texture of the flesh perfect, and they were juicy and full of luscious ripe tomato flavor.  Oh, man, what a delightful discovery!  I live in a place that can grow real tomatoes!!  Wahoo!!!

Solving problems, the political way...

Solving problems, the political way...  A two year old email surfaces that details some improprieties by the Los Angeles County School Board.  These are elected officials – politicians – so you'd expect them to find a political answer.  They did.  They voted to change the email retention policy to one year.  Problem solved!  Seriously...

Comparing floating point numbers...

Comparing floating point numbers...  A great discussion that gets right down to the key concept: ULPs...

Don't fear the leaker...

Don't fear the leaker...  A new paper by Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit.  It's short, and it's excellent.  What he proposes would go a long way toward fixing some longstanding problems in our federal government's inexorably growing bureaucracies.  Naturally, it therefore has nearly zero chance of being implemented.  But I can dream, can't I?  They haven't outlawed that yet!